- TCM schedule – Sept. 21 (evening): Turner Classic Movies will be airing two Carl Franklin-directed crime dramas, Devil in a Blue Dress and One False Move; Dick Powell’s atomic age thriller Split Second; and two romantic dramas costarring Charles Boyer, Anatole Litvak’s All This, and Heaven Too and Leo McCarey’s Love Affair.
TCM schedule – Sept. 21 (evening): 2 Carl Franklin-directed crime dramas, 2 romance classics of the studio era costarring Charles Boyer, 1 atomic age suspense thriller
On the evening of Saturday, Sept. 21, Turner Classic Movies will be airing two crime dramas of the 1990s directed by Carl Franklin: Devil in a Blue Dress and One False Move. (See TCM’s Sept. 21 movie schedule further below. Most titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
The Carl Franklin double bill will be followed by the “Noir Alley” presentation Split Second (which will be shown again on Sunday morning). That will be followed by two romantic dramas of the studio era costarring Charles Boyer, All This, and Heaven Too and Love Affair.
Below is a brief glimpse at the five titles listed above.
Love Affair (1939)
These days, Leo McCarey’s Oscar-nominated Love Affair is best remembered as the original version of McCarey’s own 1957 hit An Affair to Remember. In all fairness, the remake is actually much better than the original, which suffers from an inadequate leading man in the person of Charles Boyer, who was far more effective as a dramatic actor (see The Earrings of Madame De…) than as a Latin (or Continental, if you wish) Lover. More disappointingly, Best Actress Oscar nominee Irene Dunne delivers a competent yet less-than-stellar performance.
Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr starred in An Affair to Remember, while Warren Beatty and Annette Bening were the two leads in the panned 1994 box office dud Love Affair.
Now, bear in mind that Love Affair borrows heavily from Tay Garnett’s One Way Passage, a 1932 shipboard drama that earned Robert Lord the Best Story Academy Award. William Powell and Kay Francis star as the doomed lovers.
Future director Delmer Daves (3:10 to Yuma, The Hanging Tree) and future blacklistee Donald Ogden Stewart were credited for the Love Affair screenplay, from an Oscar-nominated screen story by Leo McCarey and Mldred Cram.
All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
Anatole Litvak’s glossy,* Oscar-nominated period drama All This, and Heaven Too is based on Rachel Field’s 1938 novel, which itself was inspired by real-life events: The author’s great-aunt, Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, was a governess who fell in love with her employer, the Duc de Praslin, whose wife was then murdered. Having said that, it’s undeniable that All This, and Heaven Too borrows heavily from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Bette Davis stars as Henriette (a role made to order for Davis’ fellow Warner Bros. contract star Olivia de Havilland), while Charles Boyer is the stoic Duc de Praslin. But the one stealing the show is Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Barbara O’Neil (Scarlett O’Hara’s mother in Gone with the Wind) as the unbalanced Duchesse de Praslin.
June Lockhart (Lost in Space), who turned 99 last June 25, in one of the daughters of the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin.
* Oscar-nominated black-and-white cinematography by Ernest Haller; art direction by Carl Jules Weyl; costumes by Orry-Kelly.
Split Second (1953)
The directorial feature film debut of former Warner Bros. contract star Dick Powell (42nd Street, Footlight Parade), the suspense thriller Split Second revolves around escaped armored-car robbers (Stephen McNally, Paul Kelly) holding a group of people (Alexis Smith, Jan Sterling, Keith Andes, Robert Paige, Arthur Hunnicutt) hostage in a ghost town near an area in the Nevada desert where atomic bomb testing is about to take place.
Ironically – or rather, tragically – Powell would have his own brush with the effects of the United States government’s atomic bomb testing when he directed John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz, and Agnes Moorehead in The Conqueror in 1956. He would die at age 58 in 1963.
One False Move (1991)
Directed by Carl Franklin from a screenplay by Tom Epperson and future Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton (Best Adapted Screenplay for Sling Blade, 1996), the low-budget crime drama One False Moves follows three murderers on their way from Los Angeles to Arkansas, where they are awaited by a local small-town sheriff and two L.A. cops. Thornton is one of the criminals; Bill Paxton is the sheriff. A box office flop, One False Move does have its fans.
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Carl Franklin’s neo-noir Devil in a Blue Dress features Denzel Washington as an unemployed World War II veteran who takes on the job of finding a white woman (Jennifer Beals) hiding in one of Los Angeles’ black jazz clubs. The gig, however, isn’t as uncomplicated as the WWII vet initially thought. Franklin also penned this big-screen version of Walter Mosley’s 1990 novel. A commercial disappointment (budget: $22 million; domestic gross: $16.1 million), Devil in a Blue Dress was generally well regarded upon its release.
Note: The blue-dress-garbed white woman on the cover of Mosley’s book is a blonde à la Veronica Lake.
Immediately below is TCM’s Sept. 21 schedule.
TCM schedule today (EDT) – Sept. 21
8:30 AM Her Husband’s Secretary (1937)
Director: Frank McDonald.
Cast: Jean Muir, Beverly Roberts, Warren Hull.
61 min. Drama.9:30 AM Screen Directors Playhouse: ‘The Sword of Villon’ (1956)
Director: George Waggner.
Cast: Errol Flynn, Hillary Brooke, Pamela Duncan.
26 min. Drama.10:07 AM Tarzan’s Desert Mystery (1943)
Director: William Thiele.
Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Nancy Kelly, Johnny Sheffield.
70 min. Adventure.12:00 PM Deep in My Heart (1954)
Director: Stanley Donen.
Cast: José Ferrer, Merle Oberon, Helen Traubel, Doe Avedon, Walter Pidgeon, Paul Henreid, Tamara Toumanova, Isobel Elsom, Rosemary Clooney, Gene Kelly, Fred Kelly, Jane Powell, Vic Damone, Ann Miller, Cyd Charisse, James Mitchell, Howard Keel, Tony Martin, Joan Weldon, Russ Tamblyn.
132 min. Musical Biopic.2:30 PM Edge of the City (1957)
Director: Martin Ritt.
Cast: John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, Jack Warden.
85 min. Social Drama.4:00 PM Soylent Green (1973)
Director: Richard Fleischer.
Cast: Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Edward G. Robinson, Brock Peters.
87 min. Science-Fiction | Thriller.5:45 PM Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Director: Sydney Pollack.
Cast: Robert Redford, Will Geer, Delle Bolton.
110 min. Adventure.8:00 PM Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Director: Carl Franklin.
Cast: Denzel Washington, Tom Sizemore, Jennifer Beals.
102 min. Crime.10:00 PM One False Move (1991)
Director: Carl Franklin.
Cast: Cynda Williams, Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Beach, Earl Billings, Jim Metzler.
105 min. Action.12:00 AM Split Second (1953)
Director: Dick Powell.
Cast: Stephen McNally, Alexis Smith, Jan Sterling, Keith Andes, Arthur Hunnicutt, Paul Kelly, Robert Paige, Richard Egan, Frank DeKova.
85 min. Suspense | Mystery.2:00 AM All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
Director: Anatole Litvak.
Cast: Bette Davis, Charles Boyer, Jeffrey Lynn, Barbara O’Neil, Virginia Weidler, Helen Westley, Walter Hampden, Henry Daniell, Harry Davenport, George Coulouris.
143 min. Romance.4:30 AM Love Affair (1939)
Director: Leo McCarey.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lee Bowman, Astrid Allwyn, Maurice Moscovitch, Joan Leslie (bit).
87 min. Romance.6:00 AM Twenty Plus Two (1961)
Director: Joseph M. Newman.
Cast: David Janssen, Jeanne Crain, Dina Merrill
102 min. Suspense | Mystery.8:00 AM Ring of Fire (1961)
Director: Andrew L. Stone.
Cast: David Janssen, Joyce Taylor, Frank Gorshin.
90 min. Crime.10:00 AM Split Second (1953) Rerun.
notes/references
Devil in a Blue Dress domestic gross via boxofficemojo.com. Budget figure via the San Barbara Film Festival website. According to online sources, Carl Franklin mentions the $22 million budget in his Devil in a Blue Dress DVD commentary, in which he adds that the movie earned $22 million worldwide.
TCM schedule via their website.
Bette Davis and Charles Boyer All This, and Heaven Too image: Warner Bros.
“TCM Schedule: 2 Romance Classics, 1 Atomic Age Thriller” last modified in September 2024.